neither.”
Despite their bravado and their evident enjoyment of their work, they could not successfully deal with the damaged sewers or their contents. The “great stink” issued forth in 1858. This was the period when the waterclosets of a quarter of a million households were directly connected to the public sewers, with the result that the waste was discharged immediately into the Thames. It became a river of effluent and an open sewer. The foreshore was black. Victoria and Albert embarked upon a pleasure cruise, but within minutes the smell had driven them back to the shore. The water supply of many Londoners was piped directly from the Thames, and was now described as being “of a brownish colour.” The windows of the Houses of Parliament were covered with sheets soaked in chlorine, but they could not preventthe stench from what Disraeli called “a Stygian pool reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror.” It was the “unbearable horror” of the city. Disraeli himself left a committee room of Westminster in some discomfort. “With a mass of papers in one hand and with his pocket handkerchief clutched in the other, and applied closely to his nose, with body half bent, [he] hastened in dismay from the pestilential odour.” The underground world had invaded the surface. All that was ejected and rejected had come back with a vengeance.
“Flushing the Sewers,” 1851 (illustration credit Ill.15)
The parliamentary authorities were now acutely aware that the sanitary conditions of the nineteenth century had changed not at all, and had in fact deteriorated, from the conditions of the fifteenth century. They were obliged to take general and immediate action. The chief engineer of theMetropolitan Board of Works,Joseph Bazalgette, found a solution. He proposed to build an elaborate system of sewers, running in parallel with the river, that would intercept the pipes going down to the Thames and carry the effluent beyond the city into “outfalls” atBarking in north-east London and atCrossness south of the Thames on theErith marshes. He also managed the reconstruction of the smaller sewers already in existence. The five principal intercepting sewers were at different depths, the lowest being some 36 feet beneath the surface.
Some were fearful at the enterprise of meddling with the underworld. They believed, according to an essayin
All the Year Round
, that the newsewers might become “volcanoes of filth; gorged veins of putridity; ready to explode at any moment in a whirlwind of foul gas, and poison all those whom they fail to smother.” This is a vision of Hades let loose upon the outer world. Yet Bazalgette’s work continued. Ford Madox Brown’s painting of heroic labourers,
Work
, completed in 1863, depicts men laying an underground sewer in Heath Street, Hampstead.
One of the lower sewers runs from Ravenscourt Park and Hammersmith to Kensington; it then proceeds beneath theBrompton Road and Piccadilly, and makes its hidden way along the Strand and Aldwych before going under the City and Aldgate. Another sewer starts at Hammersmith and begins its long journey towards theriver Lea. It passes under Fulham and Chelsea before being propelled by a pumping station towards Millbank and theHouses of Parliament. From there it travels unseen beneath theVictoria Embankment, Blackfriars and Tower Hill, where it is directed to Whitechapel and Stepney. It has traversed the depths of London. In the tunnels themselves there is much elaborate architectural detailing and decoration, such as the graduated edging of the arches, even though the effects will rarely if ever be seen; it is almost Egyptian in its secrecy.
The whole system finds its quietus at the Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford; the original building, now used as a “back-up,” was conceived in a style variouslydescribed as Venetian Gothic or Slavic or Byzantine as a suitably solemn tribute to the matter of the underworld. It was called “the cathedral
Despite their bravado and their evident enjoyment of their work, they could not successfully deal with the damaged sewers or their contents. The “great stink” issued forth in 1858. This was the period when the waterclosets of a quarter of a million households were directly connected to the public sewers, with the result that the waste was discharged immediately into the Thames. It became a river of effluent and an open sewer. The foreshore was black. Victoria and Albert embarked upon a pleasure cruise, but within minutes the smell had driven them back to the shore. The water supply of many Londoners was piped directly from the Thames, and was now described as being “of a brownish colour.” The windows of the Houses of Parliament were covered with sheets soaked in chlorine, but they could not preventthe stench from what Disraeli called “a Stygian pool reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror.” It was the “unbearable horror” of the city. Disraeli himself left a committee room of Westminster in some discomfort. “With a mass of papers in one hand and with his pocket handkerchief clutched in the other, and applied closely to his nose, with body half bent, [he] hastened in dismay from the pestilential odour.” The underground world had invaded the surface. All that was ejected and rejected had come back with a vengeance.
“Flushing the Sewers,” 1851 (illustration credit Ill.15)
The parliamentary authorities were now acutely aware that the sanitary conditions of the nineteenth century had changed not at all, and had in fact deteriorated, from the conditions of the fifteenth century. They were obliged to take general and immediate action. The chief engineer of theMetropolitan Board of Works,Joseph Bazalgette, found a solution. He proposed to build an elaborate system of sewers, running in parallel with the river, that would intercept the pipes going down to the Thames and carry the effluent beyond the city into “outfalls” atBarking in north-east London and atCrossness south of the Thames on theErith marshes. He also managed the reconstruction of the smaller sewers already in existence. The five principal intercepting sewers were at different depths, the lowest being some 36 feet beneath the surface.
Some were fearful at the enterprise of meddling with the underworld. They believed, according to an essayin
All the Year Round
, that the newsewers might become “volcanoes of filth; gorged veins of putridity; ready to explode at any moment in a whirlwind of foul gas, and poison all those whom they fail to smother.” This is a vision of Hades let loose upon the outer world. Yet Bazalgette’s work continued. Ford Madox Brown’s painting of heroic labourers,
Work
, completed in 1863, depicts men laying an underground sewer in Heath Street, Hampstead.
One of the lower sewers runs from Ravenscourt Park and Hammersmith to Kensington; it then proceeds beneath theBrompton Road and Piccadilly, and makes its hidden way along the Strand and Aldwych before going under the City and Aldgate. Another sewer starts at Hammersmith and begins its long journey towards theriver Lea. It passes under Fulham and Chelsea before being propelled by a pumping station towards Millbank and theHouses of Parliament. From there it travels unseen beneath theVictoria Embankment, Blackfriars and Tower Hill, where it is directed to Whitechapel and Stepney. It has traversed the depths of London. In the tunnels themselves there is much elaborate architectural detailing and decoration, such as the graduated edging of the arches, even though the effects will rarely if ever be seen; it is almost Egyptian in its secrecy.
The whole system finds its quietus at the Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford; the original building, now used as a “back-up,” was conceived in a style variouslydescribed as Venetian Gothic or Slavic or Byzantine as a suitably solemn tribute to the matter of the underworld. It was called “the cathedral
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